CX Trends You Need to Watch in 2018 [White paper]

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CX Trends You Need to Watch in 20182018 is game time. It’s time to look at your customers as teammates rather than as opponents. It’s time to reboot your customer experience game. And: It’s time for you to win.

Here is the reality: A poor (or even worse, unmemorable) customer experience (CX) has led to a resounding “Game Over” for many businesses in the last few years. In 2018, becoming a winning company with a devoted fan base is no easy feat. With a crowded online marketplace and so many variables at work (be they social media, evolving digital tools, emerging AI, employee turnover, cutbacks, or the increasingly discerning consumers in the global market), developing a workable strategy to engage with – and win over – the hearts of customers can seem impossible. No need to feel defeated, though: Certain trends are emerging that businesses should set a course to follow this year to vie for the number one spot. Achieving a top CX strategy is an integral part of this journey, and remains the number one priority for companies across the globe. Many are already wise to this fact: According to Forbes, as of last year, 75% of companies suggested that their prime objective was to cultivate an outstanding customer experience game plan in the future.

Put your hands firmly on the controls and press ‘Start’ on the top CX trends you need to be watching in 2018. Among them, one thing is certain: It’s time to invite your customers onto your team, and win. Continue reading →

How to Successfully Handle Call Volume During Peak Times [Webinar]

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How to Successfully Handle Call Volume During Peak Times [Webinar]Every call center faces the problem of unpredictable spikes in call volume. Sometimes the causes are understood, even anticipated. However, in many cases these peak periods come as a shock to the system. The reality is that voice remains the most preferred channel for customers, but its popularity comes at a price: long hold times.

Unfortunately, the effect of this on the customer experience is significant: 60% of customers will abandon a call after just one minute of waiting on hold. If you want to improve customer loyalty and keep your CSAT scores healthy, you’ll need to make sure you have the right safety nets in place. Continue reading →

5 Intriguing Call Center Acquisitions from the First Half of 2018

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5 Intriguing Call Center Acquisitions from the First Half of 2018We’re about half-way through 2018, and the pace of acquisitions in the call center space has been brisk. We’ve seen transactions for every size and covering a wide range of technology. It always amazes me how dynamic and fluid this industry is. Below are the 5 most interesting deals I’ve seen so far. An honorable mention goes out to Mitel’s acquisition by a private equity firm and departure from the public market. (Kind of the reverse of Avaya’s move last year.)

It’s interesting that three of the five deals below are related to “analytics” or “intelligence” of customer behavior. That’s emerging as a key frontier in the broader world of customer interaction management. Four of them include “AI” or “machine learning”, although those terms are being used so casually now, they are almost meaningless.

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Group Effort: Introducing Fonolo’s LinkedIn Group, “Contact Center Best Practices for the Real World”

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Group Effort: Introducing Fonolo’s LinkedIn Group, “Contact Center Best Practices for the Real World”For those with even one foot in the digital doorway, chances are you may have heard some breaking news around the watercooler at the beginning of 2018: A revival is being planned for a well-known social networking platform: LinkedIn Groups.

If you have ever belonged to a handful of LinkedIn Groups, or just one, your experience was probably alternately positive and negative; this reflects its reputation in the marketplace, too. LinkedIn Groups have the ability to offer meaningful opportunities for discussion, collaboration, and relevant industry news. In the past, though, they have faced criticism for becoming impersonal, laden with spam, or worst of all: deadly silent. Continue reading →

3 Takeaways from Our Live Discussion on Top Call Center Metrics [Video]

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3 Takeaways from Our Live Discussion on Top Call Center MetricsLast week, Fonolo hosted an insightful live discussion on the top call center metrics you need to be tracking . This expert panel discussed NPS for customer satisfaction, popular call center metrics, the future of the voice channel, and so much more! To save you some time, we’ve extracted video snippets showcasing highlights from the discussion.

First, let’s take a quick look at the panel of speakers: Daniel Hong, Jon Arnold, and Shai Berger.

 

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10 Trends That Will Disrupt Customer Service in 2018 [White Paper]

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10 Trends That Will Disrupt Customer Service in 2018“I feel the need, the need for speed!”

In Top Gun, the 1986 classic, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell’s famous phrase effectively summed up the future of customer service (CS). While it wasn’t intended to evoke the relationship between business and consumer, over 30 years later, it speaks directly to the state of CS today.

Speed is arguably the most significant benchmark for every single customer service interaction today.  Businesses can never be too fast to reply, react, or resolve an issue. As channel choices continue to stack up, and consumers navigate through them with swift precision, the expectation to be ‘ready and waiting’ at all times of the day is now the gold standard in customer service.

Despite this, recent reports reveal that the average time to handle a customer service request is 15 hours and 17 minutes – a far cry from first-class service expectations. But of the 12 industries that improved customer satisfaction in 2016, nine of them had something in common: They each sped up First Response Time (FRT). When issues are resolved in the initial five minutes of first contact, the average customer satisfaction score is 90 (on a 100-point scale). If resolved in six to 10 minutes, the satisfaction rating drops seven points to 83, and continues dropping steadily as additional time passes. Therefore, responding quickly will help to stave off declining satisfaction.

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What’s the Ceiling on Self-Service?

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What’s the Ceiling on Self-Service?Headlines featuring “AI” and “chatbot” have dominated the discussion in the customer service space for the past year. Naturally, it’s tantalizing to imagine a world where no one needs to call a contact center, but the sizzle around AI and chatbots obscures a deeper question: How much customer support can actually be done by self-service? This question has been with us since the earliest web sites and IVRs started to offload the simplest tasks from agents. Each new wave of technology revives the dream that we can eliminate (or drastically reduce) human agents. We can see the current excitement around AI and chatbots as an extension of this long-running dream. Is it different this time? Are we reaching the promised land? Or are we chasing a receding horizon?

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Catch Fonolo at the 19th Annual Customer Contact Week in Las Vegas

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Catch Fonolo at the 19th Annual Customer Contact Week in Las VegasIf you’re deeply invested in the customer service industry, you already know this one fact: June will be an exciting, educational month thanks to the 19th Annual Customer Contact Week, held this year from June 18-22 at The Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Known as Call Center Week since its inception in 1999, the annual event has rebranded as Customer Contact Week in 2018, in acknowledgement of omni-channel technologies improving customer experiences in the industry as a whole.

CCW is regarded as the #1 event in the industry, this year attracting an estimated 2,500 attendees from over 900 companies, and featuring over 175 expert speakers. It also celebrates industry leaders via its CCW Excellence Awards in categories including CX Leader of the Year, Best in Class Contact Center, Best Contact Center Culture, and CX Innovation of the Year.

 

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The Secret Sauce for Increasing Customer Happiness [White Paper]

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The Secret Sauce for Increasing Customer HappinessIf you run a call center, change is familiar. The functionality and technology is more advanced than ever before. Beyond that, the expectations of service, the metrics that gauge success, and the channels customers can use to maximize their efforts and minimize their wait times are very different.

Today, most changes to call centers are a response to consumer behaviour, rather than an effort to advance business initiatives. After all, customer happiness and engagement are amongst the most significant drivers behind the image, culture, and success of an organization. In fact, 82% of consumers surveyed by Zendesk in their annual Benchmark Report said they stopped doing business with a company because of bad customer service from call centers. Continue reading →

How to Optimize Your Call Center’s Performance

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How to Optimize Your Call Center’s PerformanceSometimes call centers have to call a “Code Blue!”

In the best of all possible worlds, a call center is a healthy hub of open communication, brimming with competent agents and dynamic managers who diagnose and fix client problems using the best tools available. Their victories are endless, and the loyalty of their clients is palpable. For many support teams, however, this ideal scenario remains unrealized: Poor infrastructure, employee malaise, and overall lack of vision each contribute to an insufferable call center team environment that sets everyone, and everything, up for failure.

But fear not: No support team is too far-gone; there is always room for improvement, and ways of curing the worst of ills. Keep the following broad strokes in mind if you’re aiming to breathe new life back into your call center. The secret to reviving it? Focus on the heart of the matter: People and platforms.

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